


romantic abacus

by notalpaca



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII
Genre: F/M, idk might fuck around and do some world building in between, making the barbies kiss then working backwards into character development
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-21
Updated: 2020-04-17
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:42:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22355809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notalpaca/pseuds/notalpaca
Summary: Perhaps there were worse matches to set flame to. [ canon non-compliant ] [ self-indulgent nonsense pairing ]
Relationships: Elena/Sephiroth (Compilation of FFVII)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 16





	1. past that borderline

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was undoubtedly a very stupid idea to continue with this line of questioning. [ and then they fucked ]

Elena is entirely too aware she is making a mistake as she angles her jaw so he can nip even more vigorously along her collarbone.

'But I've done stupider things, haven't I?' she thinks ruefully as she grasps about his shoulders. They are awfully broad, even without the pauldrons. It makes her feel small. Not in a good way...but not in a bad way either.

"You know this is going to ruin our working relationship..." she murmurs, and to her credit she manages to come off as only a little breathless.

"Don't worry, I'm discrete." His voice is low and deep and reverberates as he speaks the words mere centimeters from her ear. She frowns, just a little, even as his lips begin to trace the shell of said ear pleasurably.

"You carry a six foot sword on your person at almost all times." The delivery of the statement was meant to be incredulous, but that's been totally stifled by the moan stuck in her mouth.

This time he laughs and it's twice as throaty and seems even an octave lower before, if that's at all possible.

"Discretion is my middle name."

That's bullshit. He doesn't even have a middle name.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so yeah now that this is over with see you again in another half a decade i guess  
> edit;  
> uhhh so now that im actually doing this i sat myself down and wrote some notes about the character motivations of our bizarre coupling and in the process i realized it was time for a title change. when i named this i thought it was going to be a one off and even then i still wasnt sold on what i chose. after digging around a little more i realized there was yet another shiina ringo track with excellent theming and it was a duet with utada hikaru to boot (lol kingdom hearts throwback) so here we are with a new title riffing off of that and a refreshed tagline.


	2. rules of engagement

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Despite her best efforts at damage control, he resolved to escalate a one-off poor life choice into a regular tryst. [ oops we got chapters now ]

Right along the border of consciousness and wakefulness, Elena thought that perhaps she had just had an incredibly vivid dream. But as the halation of sleep wore off and the light of day diffused through her closed blinds, the disastrous reality became apparent. Not only was there a dull, delicious ache throbbing through her (it was remarkably similar to the sort she felt after a more physically intensive mission), but judging from the sounds coming from her bathroom, someone was using her shower.

She knew exactly who the someone was because she'd been stone-cold sober during the banal corporate mixer the night before that led them into this mess. Elena had been baited into many a conflict, but the last thing she had expected was for a renowned war hero to bait her into taking him home for the night. Which was probably why it had worked, and she wouldn't make the same mistake twice. Making it once was bad enough, seeing as now she would have to deal with the fallout. 

Why couldn't he have had the decency to disappear before she woke up? Wasn't that the way these sorts of things were supposed to work? Most of her knowledge about hookup culture came second hand by way of Reno regaling her whether she wanted to hear the disgusting details or not, but the part about one half of such a tryst having to slink off shamefully in the early morning afterward should have rung true. Obviously, she was in no position to run away, seeing as it was her apartment.

There wasn't much more time to muse on the logistics of the matter, because the water stopped running. Briefly, Elena considered drawing the covers up over her head and just playing dead to get out of having to deal with the awkward confrontation, but that wasn't her style. She was no coward and she would face god and walk backward into hell like a man.

Then he stepped out of the bathroom, long hair dripping water all over her laminate flooring. Thank god it wasn't real hardwood, because even if he did look like even more of a marble statue than usual, that sort of crime could never be forgiven. The lingering soreness of her hips served as a deterrent to the heat that slid along to rest at the pit of her stomach. They stared each other down.

"Why are you still here?" In typical Elena fashion, she shot first.

"Debriefing."

"Well then..." With one hand she grasped a sheet around her upper body to conceal some things that he had already seen and used the other to make a vaguely insouciant sweeping motion. "You have the floor, General."

"You've got good stamina for non-enhanced personnel. Excellent even, considering your gender and size. I'm conscripting you into an alliance."

"You can't possibly be serious."

"I very rarely jest." The first hint of expression that crossed his face since the events of the night before was almost a simper.

"Has anyone ever told you that you are terrible at code-switching between the bedroom and the war room? Because you are." She snapped back the way she tended to do whenever she felt she was being taken for a fool. "Unilaterally declaring whatever it is you are trying to establish isn't a thing."

Sephiroth gave her a look that she knew very well, it was the 'you are operating outside of appropriate parameters' look that she had gotten so used to back at the academy. Good, maybe he'd back off.

"I wasn't aware that there were rules of engagement for situations like ours. Give me your personal cell, I'm putting my contact information in." He crossed the distance back to the bedside and placed his hand out in a confident assertion that she would pass him the device. Whether it was because she was gobsmacked by the fact he was still pressing the issue despite her acidic behavior or because his renewed proximity forced Elena to recall the overwhelming physicality of the previous night's encounter was up for debate, but her reaction was same nonetheless. Compliance.

"Don't worry, it'll be good for morale. For the both of us."

His assurance was inimitable, just like everything else about the man.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> due to the pandemic i have decided to forgo my usual half-decade hiatus and continue making the barbies kiss so please sit back relax and enjoy the suffering because yes i switched tenses no i do not care


	3. a certain type

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes the most profound epiphanies come to you unwillingly when stuck at a bar on a worknight. [ reno and rude show up ]

He not only put his contact information in her PHS, but he checked what hers was and remembered it well enough that not so long after his exit from the scene of the crime, Elena heard the polyphonic ping that signaled a message received. It wasn't a standard SMS though, he'd elected to use a service that was a great asset in personal communication but a monumental pain when it came into play professionally.

SHINE was a snappy little app known for having a variety of cute stickers that could be purchased for half the price of a cup of coffee. It also had end to end encryption and was favorite among middle managers who wanted to cheat on their wives. Not that the Turks would get involved just because of that, but when the Venn diagram of scummy adultery crossed into corporate espionage? Then it was a pain in the ass.

Major General Paradigm Shift sent her a sticker of a friend of the cartoon dog mascot SOLDIER was using as of late. Elena left it on read.

When Monday morning came she could no longer physically feel their encounter, but much to her chagrin the visual evidence had not yet faded. What the hell had she been thinking, necking like an oversexed teenager? What the hell was he thinking by initiating such nonsense anyway? The questions left her heated, annoyed with the circumstances she had found herself in. At least her white shirt had a high collar that would sweep the detritus of indiscretion away under a starched cotton-poly blend.

At least until that night when Reno and Rude dragged her out for business drinking. A time-honored tradition where even though they were all off the clock and really should have had no reason to spend more time together, the three of them were at a bar splitting some small plates and working their way through a pitcher of beer. It was almost like none of them had any kind of real lives outside of work, but whenever she pointed out that miserable fact they insisted she was dead wrong but offered no concrete proof to the contrary.

In the end, it was easier to loosen her metaphorical collar than to try and convince them they weren't the paragons of work/life balance they thought they were. That night in particular though? Elena made the mistake of literally loosening her collar, and within moments Reno clucked his tongue like a preening chocobo. Her eyes went wide as she realized her screw-up.

"Well, well, well..." Reno leaned back in his seat and jabbed Rude with his elbow none too subtly, making sure he had some backup in the maneuver he was about to execute "Looks like our little rookie finally got some nookie."

Elena forcefully shoved some pita bread in her mouth to suppress her instinct to spew a diatribe back at the redhead while Rude eyeballed the scene from behind his shades. Though she could only chew the carbohydrates so long and after a large swallow came the retaliation.

"Yes, but that's not any of your business." The glare she shot was formidable, but they may as well have been wearing kevlar.

"Really? You gonna be like that 'Lena? I'm a firm believer in sexual expression, and Rude here has always been a real paragon of women's lib."

"Neither of those facts, both of which are questionably true, have any bearing on the matter."

"C'mon, quit being sexist. If Rude and I were your girlfriends, you'd tell us every nasty little detail." Rude inclined his head a little, the nod was a tacit agreement with his redheaded partner's statement.

"I don't have girlfriends, and even if I did I wouldn't tell them." That was a lie, she did have one girlfriend, who was fortunately on a theatrical residency at the Gold Saucer and not physically nearby enough to drag the details out of Elena.

"We're just glad you aren't pining after Tseng anymore and want to share the joy..." Reno said non-threateningly, which was ironically when he was usually at his most dangerous.

"I was never pining after Tseng!" Now she was getting well and truly worked up, as the topic of their dark-haired leader had been a sore point for long enough "I just admired his work ethic and the way he looked in his slacks!"

"Bullshit. If that were the case you would've switched targets to some other long-haired emotionally unavailable older man ages ago."

"Like Sephiroth." The first words out of Rude's mouth during the whole exchange were matter-of-fact and Elena choked violently on her beer when she heard them.

"Yeah, exactly. We'd have to keep you away from Hojo too if that was the case." Reno continued to make his case, unaware that the talking points had crumbled into dust before he even spoke them. Elena continued coughing and as a gesture of goodwill, the redhead slapped her on the back. "You good?"

"I'm not sleeping with Sephiroth." The statement came out in a panicked rush as soon as she had the breath to say it and the whites of her eyes burned as she realized she needed to follow it up with something to change the topic because she had veered dangerously into unsafe territory. "And Hojo doesn't even look good in slacks so he doesn't even fit the criteria of this hypothetical type you think I have!"

"Maybe would if he found a decent tailor. There is definitely something about him that drives co-eds on spring break wild, but hell if I have a clue what it is..." It was almost like Reno was legitimately trying to figure out how Hojo got so much poontang for about fifteen seconds before he popped a bite-sized morsel of crispy meat into his mouth and his eyebrows unfurrowed.

"Pheromones...?" As Rude put forth his dubiously helpful theory, Elena let out a sigh of relief that it seemed neither of them had picked up on her outburst. Speculating on Hojo's sex life may have been a miserable topic to listen to, but at least it distracted them well enough to stop probing about her own.

It was also disgusting enough that when she insisted on paying her part of the tab and taking her leave, they didn't object. That was a rarity because more often than not when they dragged her drinking all three of them would be out so late that the trains stopped running. The night's tiny blessing was Elena managing to catch the last train home.

Seated in the sparsely occupied railcar with the soothing rumble of the tracks in her ears and inebriation in her veins left her wide open for attack by her very thoughts. Did she really have a type and was it as simply reduced to that, like Reno and Rude had pointed out? Elena swore she hadn't felt much for the man himself, even years ago when she couldn't open a newspaper without seeing some sensational propaganda about his war-time prowess. She certainly hadn't related much to the swooning that her academy cohorts fell victim to. If anything, those glossy recruitment posters with his face on them left her feeling an irrational resentment that she painted over with begrudging respect. Come to think of it, that was that same exact arc she followed regarding Tseng, from the point where he had been her sister's mysterious supervisor to her own untouchable immediate superior...

Sweet Mary Minerva, she did have a type! Elena's face contorted in distaste, but no one was around who would notice or care. Just herself, confronted with a personal revelation that had come too late. If only the ugly truth had hit her in the face last week, she could have sidestepped the entire mess. Instead, she found herself staring at a chat log devoid of anything but a cheerfully saluting cartoon dog. It was grossly unfair, that in the middle of the night she was to be confronted by such a ghoulishly cute specter of her stupidity. The whole situation was taunting her, and she never responded well to that. Especially not when she had just gone a few rounds in a pub.

Her thumbs trembled with the righteous anger you only ever found in a woman wound past her breaking point as she mashed them against the glass of her phone screen. Elena would regret sending the message in the morning, something that was rapidly becoming a pattern.

'I'm sorry, but why the hell did you think sleeping with me was a good idea!?'

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey did you know SHINE is based off the real world app LINE? it has stickers but in japanese territories they don't call them stickers, they call them stamps. you know what else is called stamp? the SOLDIER propaganda cartoon dog in the remake. please appreciate my excellent world-building which is really more of a bad joke that i have to explain in the postscript. anyway you can now buy an official FFVIIR skin in LINE so really im a genius since i wrote that bit shortly before it went on sale  
> next chapter we are working backwards to an event that helped lead up to this mess, and we will see how well goes since it means i have to write more from sephiroth's perspective and he is a mystery wrapped inside an enigma locked tightly inside a tough kuponut to crack


End file.
